Wednesday, June 23, 2010

LED dress from CuteCircuit hits the red carpet, lighting up the fashion world...

On 3rd May's night illuminated clothing was literally the highlight at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Costume Institute Gala when singer Katy Perry switched on her LED-dress made by London based Cute Circuit a pioneer of wearable technology development and design. The floor-length, pale pink and white dress looked like a ‘play save’ fashion choice of Katy Perry until she hit the ‘on’ button, starting a color explosion all over her dress, taking the breath away from spectators. Cute Circuit not only managed to get high profile attention from the fashion universe for their work but also did an excellent job in promoting, showing off the potential technology enhanced clothing has to offer. Especially when textiles illuminate in millions of color shades. Taking their experience from the Galaxy Dress by using tiny, full color LEDs lined up on ribbons concealed underneath the top layer of the chiffon gown, Katy Perry’s dress is a scaled down version, reducing the 24,000 LEDs to 3,000 LEDs which makes the power supply wearable with a couple of light weight LiPo batteries underneath the dress around the hips. The light control electronics on a flex circuit board is hand embroidered on a layer of silk. A bit odd is the on/off switch: a relatively large push switch, usually seen in vintage automotive application, is placed inside the TOP, kind of a show-stopper of this otherwise remarkable LED dress. Illuminated clothing has made a bright impact the past few month among the show biz world as artists and performers like to use color changing, dynamic light effects on their stage outfit in addition to the light shows on stage. The future of fashion looks now even brighter with Katy Perry’s LED dress from Cute Circuit, introducing technology enhanced fashion to the red carpet events of the fashion universe.